By Dan Ambrose: IBF mandatory Sergiy Derevyachenko will be getting a purse close to $5.5 million for his fight against Gennady Golovkin, says Lance Pugmire. This is the near the same amount that Golden Boy Promotions was offering for Derevyanchenko (13-1, 10 KOs) to face IBF middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez, says @pugboxing. Derevyanchenko didn’t agree to the deal.
The Golovkin vs. Derevyanchenko fight still isn’t a done deal yet. The vacant IBF middleweight title will be on the line for the Golovkin-Derevyanchenko fight.
Derevyanchenko, 33, is rumored to have wanted $7 million for the fight. His biggest career payday is $500,000. It’s easy to see Derevyanchenko not better off fighting Golovkin than he would if he’d fought Canelo Alvarez. If Derevyanchenko is going to get the same money for the GGG fight than he would have gotten for the Canelo match, he would have been better off fighting the Mexican star. The amount of attention Derevyanchenko would have received in fighting Canelo would have been enormous. There’s nothing wrong with Derevyanchenko fighting Golovkin, because he’s popular too, but not at the level that Canelo is.
Derevyanchenko to get close to $5.5 million for Golovkin fight
Soon to be clarified in the Oscar-Canelo story: @SDerevyanchenko expecting to earn close to $5.5 million to fight @GGGBoxing, close to the same figure that Golden Boy offered him to fight Canelo.
— Lance Pugmire (@pugboxing) August 4, 2019
It’s good money for Derevyanchenko to be getting close to $5.5 million for the Golovkin fight. When one realizes that Derevyanchenko was beaten two fights ago by Daniel Jacobs last October, it’s a miracle that the 2008 Olympian from Ukraine is in position to be fighting for a world title, be it against Golovkin or whoever. Derevyanchenko beat Jack Culcay by a 12 round unanimous decision last April in an IBF middleweight title eliminator. The IBF gave Derevyanchenko a chance to fight in an IBF title eliminator despite the fact that he’d lost.
Alvarez in a good situation now that he’s lost his IBF title
Canelo isn’t too happy at being stripped of his IBF title by the International Boxing Federation after failing to make a deal for the Derevyanchenko fight. However, it’s still not a big deal for Canelo. He’s supposed to be challenging WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade next. If Canelo wins that fight, he can always come back and face the winner of the Golovkin vs. Derevyanchenko match in a contest with all four middleweight titles on the line.
It ends up being a bigger fight for Canelo, because he’ll likely wind up facing Golovkin for all four belts. Canelo wanted GGG to capture a world title before he faces him in a trilogy match. It now looks like Golovkin is set to do exactly that. So it’s going to end well for Canelo, because when he does face the winner of the Golovkin vs. Derevyanchenko fight, it’ll be for all four titles instead of it being a simple title defense like it would have been if Alvarez had defended against Sergiy.